Blog Your Next Launch

There's been a murmur in the blogosphere about blogs replacing websites.  BL Ochman talked about a VC firm that's doing it and says she'll be converting her site soon.  They're not the first and won't be the last.

Of course, my side project, Aldo Coffee Co., never had a website to begin with.  It's been a blog since day one with better results than we would have received from a straight website.

While we're not going to jump on any bandwagon that suggests blogs are replacing websites anytime soon, you could do worse than blogging your next event launch. 

Generally speaking, when you're looking at an event launch, you don't have a lot of marketing money to play with.  Considering a decent-looking professional web site is around $2,000 (that's the going Pittsburgh rate for design and admin of a six page site, including hosting and back end measurement), you could save a bundle by foregoing the site and deciding to blog.  At least until you know you're headed for black ink.

Blogging software is simply a web content management system with some customizable design templates to organize that content.  And that's all you really need to start an event web site.  Your content is coming to you daily - speakers, sessions, exhibitor releases... even your own story regarding trials and tribulations about the launch, like Tim's doing for his Podcast Expo. 

Let's say you greenlighted a launch today.  You could start posting your content and begin telling your story in about 15 minutes with a blog.  How long would you have to wait for your web site?  At least a week, if not more.  For a quick turnaround event like a sponsored conference, that could mean 1/12 or so of your available sponsor sales cycle.  Which is a lot of time in limbo.

The level of service you'd need from a hosted blogging service like TypePad (what we use) is $12/month.  If that's too much, you could do use Blogger or WordPress for free.  Blogger has some issues (it's sort of viewed as the AOL of blogs), and WordPress may be a bit of a challenge for the completely technically inept.  But anyone can do TypePad.  Anyone.

So if you're looking to shave $1500 or more off your launch's marketing budget, substituting a blog for your planned website is worth consideration.  Given the built-in search engine indexing benefits that blogs offer, you might be able to cut your SEM budget as well.